The work described in this section has
represented a great personal adventure for me over the years. It is
what it is: the outcome of nearly thirty years of tinkering
with a theory of natural organization based on the ideas of Benedict
de Spinoza, the celebrated Rationalist philosopher. As a result of my
peculiar circumstances and various intellectual limitations, I admit
to not having so far proved outright that
the model holds water; still, on the scale of all endeavors its various
predictions are really not so difficult to examine and test, and at
this point I can in fact cite results from a number of investigations
I have undertaken that seem to argue for its further study. So, ready
or not, it is time to report on what I have discovered, and perhaps
let those in more favorable circumstances act upon the evidence as they
might care to.

Most
basically, the theory begins with Spinoza's ideas on his two main "attributes"
of existence, thought and spatial extension. In the next two essays I
take some time to translate these Rationalist era concepts into a modern
day systems framework. As it so develops, the critical connection to modern,
testable circumstances is the notion that the three dimensional (extended)
space reality we inhabit might represent a common kind of solution to
the way the subsystems of any given natural system share and degrade energy.
Specifically, it is posed that all natural systems are comprised of four
subsystems whose interaction with one another maintains intra-system integrity
on the basis of a single principle, the expression of which in entropic
terms is three-dimensional, "extended," space. Spatial extension
is thus portrayed as a kind of "unified solution" to an ever-complexifying
subsystemization of energy flow.

At
this point this sounds like a bunch of words just thrown together for
effect, but the discussion to follow will break the ideas down into more
digestible pieces, and show how easily they can be tested, once one knows
what to look for.

The
reader might remark at this point, "Okay, but what does any of this
have to do with Alfred Russel Wallace?" Well, I'm glad you asked.
If you have absorbed anything from my analyses of Wallace over the
years, it should be my conclusion that his model of biological evolution
was based on a philosophy of final causes. Wallace's cosmological
leanings always were to one degree or another teleological, and he
was a strong believer in the existence of ever more "recondite" forces
that shaped change. The theory of my own I describe here is in fact
also one that invokes final causes, since it argues that only those
systems that are internally organized into the pattern of information
flow and sharing I suggest can
exist. This is not to say the number of possible patterns is absolutely
and deterministically limited as the system evolves, just that the constraints
involved in the concept "outcome" are much greater than in
most modern cosmological models (including the Darwinian model of biological
change, which approaches an understanding of species development bordering
on a random walk philosophy). Here, the array of possible physical-space
outcomes is still infinite--just a much smaller infinite number than
before.

Beyond
this, the model I am introducing has what will be viewed as the altogether
surprising property of being able to deal with (posed) non-spatially extended
realities. I will speak of this no further in this particular series of
presentations, however, for two reasons. First, for the time being it
represents an unnecessary complication to the basic problem. Second, the
empiricism needed to deal with the complication is likely to be an order
of magnitude more difficult, as the focus no longer will merely be on
measuring and identifying particular characteristics of extended space,
but on distinguishing between these and our image/integration of same
into the conscious stream. 'Better to start with the more easily demonstrable,
I think it will be agreed.

Copyright 2006-2014 by Charles H. Smith.
All rights reserved.
Materials from this site, whole or in part, may not be reposted or otherwise
reproduced for publication without the written consent of Charles H. Smith.